July 19, 1993
Monday
11:00 AM
In the conference room, Zhorik launched into congratulations and instructions:
— Happy first day of work! To it! Turn on the computers, type up text in Lexicon, print it, read it, understand it, all shipshape! If you get stuck, go to Sergei. He’s your computer guru. Please, love him and treat him well, meaning don’t pester him too much. His office is number two. Any questions come up, charge over there. Clear? Check the phones too. We got three city lines, hooked up to a mini-PBX. By evening the principles of telephony should be second nature. Understood? From tomorrow on, there can be no problems whatsoever. We iron out the bottlenecks today. Seryoga, got it? Everybody get it? Get to it. I know half of you are seeing a computer for the first time in your lives. So, without delay, we’re learning the main buttons. Not many, just a hundred and four. Again, don’t be shy about asking Sergei about that wild hundred. We’re not paying him a salary for his pretty eyes. Clear? Everybody clear on everything?
A ragged chorus of assenting sounds pleased Zhorik.
— If everyone’s clear, disperse and get started! For any questions, head to office number two! — Zhorik ordered, and nodded at me.
We shut ourselves away in his office.
— The business is simple, — Zhorik reported. — Got tipped off on how to hustle a factory, sell the equipment for triple its worth, and keep the building for renting out. The director’s in on it. Our job’s to collect twenty thousand vouchers by end of August. If we pull it off, equipment goes for scrap, the shops go to tenants for warehouses and whatnot. So we’re collecting vouchers. Story for outsiders: an American consortium’s got its eye on a plant outside Moscow, and through Russian intermediaries, meaning us, is buying up vouchers at triple the price. Clear?
— Clear. Question: how?
— We take it from the public against a hundred percent dividend every year! Better to buy in bulk, but where from, unclear. So here’s the plan. The girls from the operations floor handle individuals, Kostya and Andrei handle wholesale buyers, with the emphasis on a bonus after privatization. Tell them, soon as we offload the factory, we’ll tack an extra ten bucks onto every voucher sold to us. Guaranteed! Outline clear? Next. Seryoga’s in charge of the computer records. Oleg Semyonovich cooks up the reporting for the oversight agencies. Seva’s head of security. He sits off to the side and makes sure nobody squeezes us, not the bandits, not the cops, not the sanitary inspectors or the fire department. Anton recommended Sevas as a specialist in handling shakedowns, but I’ve got my doubts. Something soft about him, not much of an eagle. Feels to me like he’s been pushing paper in some office. Fine, we’ll figure it out. Layout clear?
— Yes.
— Now the main thing. You can get one fund share by handing over one voucher or ten bucks. We guarantee dividends once a quarter. Two dollars, say. Meaning someone who invests a grand is guaranteed to pull in two grand four times a year.
— Awesome! Where’s the money for the dividends coming from, though?
— No idea, — Zhorik shrugged. — No point looking that far ahead. Our plan’s simple, gut the factory and rent it out. The fund can be shut down at any point. Clear?
— Clear. I’m not taking part in this.
— Why not?
— I want to work honestly.
— And who’s your dad, the mayor of Moscow?
— No. An engineer.
— Well, there you go. Once your dad becomes an Interior Ministry general or a governor, then you can work honestly. Right now, this is the only way.
— I won’t do it.
— Hm. Fine, then. Let’s try not to break the law.
A weight lifted off my chest. Zhora scratched the back of his head, clicked away at a calculator, moved his lips while recalculating, and finally concluded:
— Following the law to the letter isn’t going to happen, it wasn’t invented for that. But if we apply some ingenuity, something might work out.
— What kind of ingenuity? — I asked, suspicious.
— Military ingenuity, what else. Anyway, here’s the thing. If we end up paying investors three hundred percent annual returns, we’ll still net forty grand for salaries plus the factory. So there’s a little chance to work honestly.
— Should’ve said so from the start.
— Don’t get excited. If it goes sideways, they’ll string you up by the balls.
— How? We’re working honestly.
— There’s no shortage of people who’d want to. Bandits, cops, the district administration. They’re not going to bother figuring out honest or not honest. They’ve got a different agenda, tearing you apart. So we’ll cover ourselves. To protect your ass, we’re not handing out shares, just slips of paper. Let’s call them «certificates for the extraordinary receipt of a fund share upon expiration of the registration period.»
— What’s that supposed to be?
— Hell if I know! As long as nobody shoots us or locks us up.
I stayed quiet, mulling over what I’d heard. I wanted to work honestly, that was one thing. I didn’t want to get strung up by the balls, shot, or locked up, that was another.
Figured a compromise was possible. We’d buy the factory, repurpose it, and share the profit with investors, with the right precautions in place first.
— Good lad, — Zhorik read my thoughts. — Gather the team, explain what’s what and how. One more thing. So investors don’t smell a rat, we’ve got to guarantee we’ll buy back certificates at face value, any time. Like, any idle sucker can always get his money back. We’re a solid company, but we need to fog up the actual return process just right. That part’s sacred.
— What process?
— Elementary! If someone’s buying a certificate, meaning bringing in money, they’re served in a minute flat. If they’re returning one, meaning taking money out, that takes a couple of days minimum. Better to stretch it to a week, ideally a couple of months. Idea clear?
— More or less. How do we make that happen?
— Don’t know. Let’s think of it this way, — Zhorik pulled out a sheet of paper, drew little squares with arrows connecting one to the next:
— So, some little doll walks in with cash or vouchers. Fills out an application and a request for a certificate. We open a personal account. At the register we hand over a dozen slips of paper with our obligations spelled out. More the better. Something’s bound to get lost along the way. When the doll decides to cash in the certificate, they’ve gotta file a written request to withdraw funds, then present every single obligation slip they were given, then fill out forms, and top it off with a written explanatory note. Different people will review the papers, in a specific order. Without a signed slip number one, slip number two doesn’t get accepted into processing. Same with slip number three, has to get one and two signed first. Keep going like that right to the finish line. The more we bury it in red tape, the less anyone wants to actually ask for their money back.
— Got it.
— And another thing. To make double sure nobody wants to, we need lines and headaches. Set special, non-overlapping days for reviewing each slip. First slip reviewed Friday afternoon, second, Thursday morning till lunch, third, hell knows when, check the schedule, and so on. And for anyone who doesn’t withdraw, write up something sweet for capitalization. Like, today you’ve got a hundred bucks in certificates, in four months you’ll have a hundred fifty. Didn’t take the money out? In a year you get five hundred bucks and a bonus.
— What bonus?
— Hell if I know. Think up some silver whistle as a gift, or some kind of golden letter of credit. Anyway, something that sounds grand and free. People love it.
— Got it.
— Set the whole operation up along those lines. The general idea’s simple. Whoever brings money in gets honor, respect, and pretty wrappers. Whoever takes it out is a scoundrel and a lowlife. Treat a scoundrel like a scoundrel. Chew the idea over. And for the future. Use the word «shareholder» everywhere, but with a tiny footnote, «acquirer of a certificate for the receipt of a share.» Something along those lines, to keep the trouble down the road to a minimum. I’m off to see Vadim, bug-eyes is dawdling with the paperwork. Needs a kick to speed things up.
